


The Bridge

by Stariceling



Category: Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, References to Suicide, Suicide, dead animal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 19:43:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As much as he tries not to admit it, Jonathan finds himself growing closer to Sock. The only problem is: The more he opens up to Sock, the more vulnerable he becomes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> This idea would not leave me alone until I wrote it. Please know that this is not a happy fic, even if some of the build-up tries to be cute.

There was a bridge on the west side of town, where the land started sloping up and then abruptly cut away in a narrow canyon before rising again. In the spring and after a heavy rain there would be a river at the bottom, but the rest of the year it shrunk down to a thin stream threaded between the rocks.

The bridge was wide enough for a bike path and pedestrian walkway fenced off from the road, with a second fence between the path and the drop. There had been a string of suicides from that bridge when Jonathan was in middle school, leading to the barrier being installed, but none since. He didn’t actually know why, since it was easy enough to duck through the bars and hop down to sit on the narrow platform built along the side of the bridge, out of sight of the cars passing by.

Sock had pestered him mercilessly to get him up on that bridge, insisting that the view was great. Though it was more general boredom that finally wore him down enough to follow. Sock immediately showed Jonathan where it was possible to get through the fence.

“There’s a ledge,” Sock assured him, trotting along it himself. “You won’t fall.”

“I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t count if you just trick me into dying accidentally.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“No.” He could see the platform himself, so at least that was a non-issue in this case.

The view was indeed amazing as they gazed up the canyon. The walls were stepped, but steep, with only a few tenacious growing things clinging to the rock. All along the canyon floor green crowded in around the river in a lush tangle. Jonathan turned up his music, intending to tune out the rest of the world for a little while.

“You know, the view would be even better if you jumped,” Sock suggested.

It had been obvious from the beginning that was exactly what Sock had in mind. Jonathan just settled into a more comfortable position, with no intention of going anywhere. “Nice try.”

* * *

When a crash interrupted his T.V. time with Sock, Jonathan didn’t even want to look. Sock had been neglecting his being-a-nuisance duties all morning and he’d really hoped it would continue for at least another few hours.

Sock was still perched cross-legged on the arm of the couch, hands braced on his ankles as he looked at the mess he had made. Just as Jonathan expected, the floor lamp had been knocked over. Both the glass lampshade and bulb had been reduced to interchangeable glass shards.

“I wasn’t even trying to do that,” Sock mused.

That didn’t make any difference to Jonathan, who still had to clean up the mess. Grabbing a trash can for the glass, he set the lamp back upright out of the way before getting to work. He grumbled a non-committal swear word as he managed to prick his finger picking up the glass shards. A bead of blood welled up from this fingertip and he defensively stuck it in his mouth as he sensed Sock leaning closer.

“Sorry.”

That one word colored the whole situation in a strange way. Since when did Sock apologize for anything? “Isn’t it your job to harass me?” Jonathan asked before he could stop himself. He inspected his finger to keep from having to look at Sock. How stupid did he have to be to remind Sock to get back to tormenting him?

“Well, yeah, but it’s my day off.”

“You get days off?”

“Sure. I get weekends off. Pretty nice, huh?”

“Then why are you still here?”

“Where else would I be?”

Jonathan didn’t actually have an answer for that. Didn’t Sock have a home to go to? Maybe not, since he was dead. He cleaned up the rest of the glass in silence before flopping back into his spot on the couch. He had completely lost track of what was going on in his show at this point.

Sock had his back to both Jonathan and the T.V. He was preoccupied with swatting at the lamp like a cat, trying to knock it over again with no success.

“You went off somewhere the first weekend after you started bugging me,” Jonathan finally pointed out. At the time Jonathan had assumed he hadn’t seen Sock because he hadn’t left the house all weekend and Sock hadn’t yet figured out he could get in. Maybe Sock really had been gone, though.

“Oh, yeah. I thought I’d check on things back home. Someone filled in my grave,” Sock mentioned offhandedly.

It was the sort of thing that probably deserved some sort of response, but Jonathan had no idea what he was supposed to say. “So, your family. . . ?” he started. He barely knew anything about Sock, apart from the fact that he had committed suicide and was now convinced he was a demon tasked to haunt Jonathan to death. Someone was probably missing him, right? Why couldn’t he go haunt them instead?

“They’re still dead.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? I killed them.” Sock twisted to smile over his shoulder at Jonathan as he said it. His eyes crinkled happily, making it simultaneously the cutest and most disturbing smile Jonathan had ever seen.

“What.”

Sock turned around to face Jonathan properly, giving up on his attempts at destruction for now. “Well, I killed my parents in my sleep, so I can’t even remember it. But that’s why I had to kill myself.”

This conversation was giving him sympathy whiplash. Jonathan put his head in his hands with a groan.

“If it bothers you I can tell you all about it on Monday!” Sock promised.

Because it was his day off. Right. Except Sock didn’t take a vacation from being Sock, even when he wasn’t doing it on purpose.

* * *

It was difficult to tell when Sock was being quiet because he’d gotten bored and wandered off to look at something and when he was just lying in wait. Jonathan braced himself before opening his locker, expecting Sock to be waiting inside to jump at him. He had started trying to be wary when he noticed the little demon had been conspicuously absent for too long.

Which didn’t save him from jumping when he looked down to find an arm surrounded by a faint greenish glow sticking through his chest. He whipped around, twisting to one side so that the arm was out of him, and leveled a half-lidded glare at Sock.

He didn’t want to yell in the crowded school hallway. Reacting to Sock all the time was starting to get noticed. Jonathan usually wouldn’t care what anyone thought of him, but some of them went out of their way to bug him about being ‘crazy.’

Obviously, Sock had no such reservations. “Oh hey, since I can go through you whenever I want I bet I can see your guts!”

Jonathan couldn’t back up enough to keep Sock’s face out of his chest, trapping himself against his own locker.

“Wait, it’s all dark in here,” Sock complained.

That was the last straw. He couldn’t feel Sock’s intangible body occupying his space apart from an uncomfortable awareness that he was there, but for some reason Sock’s voice vibrated all through him.

He shoved Sock away as hard as he could. While Sock couldn’t touch him, he could touch Sock if he actually wanted to, though he immediately found it wasn’t what he expected. The moment his hands landed on Sock’s shoulders he had to reflexively yank them away again and shake them, so Sock got the last laugh and he still ended up looking like a crazy person.

Sock’s skin felt like burning. It felt like he was at some temperature so extreme Jonathan’s nerves couldn’t register it as specifically hot or cold, just as no.

Jonathan grabbed his lunch, slammed his locker, and retreated to the cafeteria without stopping to acknowledge anyone around him. He just wanted to be left alone to eat his sandwich.

Of course that was too much to ask for today. Jonathan set his sandwich down for a moment, looking around suspiciously because he expected Sock to slide into the seat next to him at any time.

Sock took advantage of his distraction to pop his head up through the table and noisily pretend to eat Jonathan’s sandwich.

“Get out of my lunch.”

“Make me,” Sock taunted, tongue lolling out. Even if he couldn’t really lick Jonathan’s sandwich that was still gross.

Jonathan gave him another abrupt shove, reflexively jerking his hand back again and checking it for damage. He didn’t see anything. Touching Sock wasn’t literally burning him. It just felt weird, closer to a burn than anything else he could think of but without the pain.

“Hey, do that again!” Sock hopped onto the bench beside him (or was he just floating over the bench and doing a convincing impression of sitting? Jonathan was never sure). He leaned forward to nip at Jonathan’s sandwich again, giving a good reason to keep physically fending him off.

It took several tries to get over his reflexive flinch, but Jonathan was able to brace one hand over Sock’s face and hold it there. That was apparently what it would take to keep Sock out of his lunch today.

Even though Jonathan’s brain associated that icy-hot sensation with pain, even anticipated pain, it didn’t actually hurt at all to touch Sock. It tingled a little bit, but it actually wasn’t that bad.

Then he felt Sock’s tongue run up his hand, still with the burning feeling of demon-skin but squishy and wet at the same time.

“Why would you lick me!?”

“I can touch you if you touch me first,” Sock laughed. He was way too happy about this. “Do it again!”

Jonathan kept his hands away from Sock for the rest of the day.

* * *

Sock was drifting upside-down over Jonathan while he tried to concentrate on his math homework. His grades were starting to slip, and it would help if he could at least get some things turned in. It was difficult to concentrate when he had Sock with him in class every day, sometimes just sitting on his desk and blocking his view of the board to be a pain.

“Do you have a fear of alphabetizing?” Sock asked him out of nowhere. “Or filing stuff? Or anything like that?”

Jonathan didn’t even look up from his homework, trying not to pay attention to Sock.

“Hey, Jonathan, listen to me. I’m asking if you have any really crippling phobias I should know about!”

“Why would I tell you if I did?”

“Because my boss says he’s going to make you alphabetize the hall of crippling phobias for eternity.” Sock fiddled with his fingers while he spoke, looking at them instead of Jonathan’s face. “But I thought: If you have a fear of alphabetizing, that would be pretty terrible. So maybe I could help you get a different job instead.”

“Wouldn’t that be the point of Hell?” Jonathan didn’t even believe in Hell, but he was pretty sure it was held up as theoretical punishment because it was supposed to be terrible on principle. How did Sock always manage to drag him into these conversations, anyway?

“I _like_ my job.” Sock finally looked him in the eyes then. His fidgeting stilled. His voice dropped slightly under the weight of the words as he added, “And maybe I’d want you to like yours too. A little bit.”

“I don’t have any phobias.”

“Great!” With that Sock flipped himself over in the air and sat down on Jonathan’s desk, flipping his frown upside down at the same time. “Then you’re perfect for the job! So you’ll be all set if you kill yourself now, right?”

Jonathan couldn’t believe he’d let himself think Sock was serious for a second there. He didn’t even bother to remind Sock that, no, he was not going to kill himself. He just pulled the little demon off of his math book and went back to work.

* * *

“Are you thinking of jumping today?” Sock wanted to know, swinging his legs carelessly over the edge.

“Not even close.”

The bridge was a nice enough spot to hang out after school, and it made a change from just going straight home. Plus no one would be able to see them sitting there unless they came right to the edge of the path and looked down. It was nice to be out in public with Sock and not have to worry about anyone catching his one-sided conversations.

Jonathan didn’t actually want to do anything today. He just wanted to listen to his music and enjoy the solitude of open space around him. He didn’t even mind Sock humming something completely out of sync with the song coming through his headphones.

“Still listening to that band you like?”

He didn’t even jump at Sock’s face suddenly being right in his face. He was too used to it. Instead he dug some extra cords out of his hoodie’s pocket. “Still Valhalla’s Soundbox. I just got a headphone splitter, if you want to listen.”

He only had the crappy ear buds that had come with his player to spare. Sock grabbed at them, only to have them slip through his fingers. He plucked at the cord, trying to pick them up with limited success. Jonathan had to pick them up himself and help Sock put them in.

The ear flaps on Sock’s hat had no more weight or texture than tissue paper when he put his hands under them, like his clothes weren’t even as tenuously tangible as his body. His skin burned like dry ice against Jonathan’s wrists and his hair tickled, a physical reminder that he was real if Jonathan tried to touch him.

“Hey, this is pretty good!” Sock decided, startling Jonathan into taking his hands away and slouching back into his own spot.

“‘Pretty good?’ You’d better upgrade that or I’m taking my headphones back.”

Sock snickered, but didn’t correct himself. Instead he closed his eyes and did a little seated dance along with the music.

For the moment, Jonathan forgot about the view, watching Sock absentmindedly. While he was distracted the wind coming down the canyon was able to tease at his hair and skirt. To anyone who didn’t know better it would have been easy to assume that Sock was just a normal kid hanging out with a friend. Not that it mattered since no one else could see Sock, but it was interesting to pretend for a little while that was anywhere near the truth.

* * *

“Hey, get a stick!” Sock called.

Jonathan turned to find him poking at a dead squirrel left in a bedraggled bundle on someone’s lawn.

“No. Poke your own dead animals.”

“I’m trying.”

Every time Sock poked his finger went intangibly into the squirrel instead. Once he was bored with the ineffective poking, he started trying to pick it up instead, lips pursed in concentration. Jonathan couldn’t tell if it was Sock’s hands or a subtle breeze that shifted the squirrel’s body and flattened its fur.

“Yeah, you’re trying too hard,” Jonathan pointed out. Every time he’d seen Sock actually manage to move something it was when he wasn’t paying attention to it.

Sock let out a long breath, looking up at Jonathan with pitiful puppy eyes. As he absentmindedly continued to poke the dead squirrel he succeeded in rolling it over.

“Gross. Are those intestines?” Jonathan’s only experience with dead animals was a dissection frog, and that had come with an illustrated guide and wasn’t all chewed up.

“Yup!” Sock turned his attention back to the pitiful corpse and poked a ghostly finger into the open wound.

Jonathan looked away from Sock’s morbid fascination to find several girls from his school staring at him from the opposite sidewalk, whispering among themselves. Because that was what he really needed on top of being the weird kid who ‘talked to himself.’

“Come on.”

Grabbing Sock by the shirt, he hauled him back from the squirrel before clasping a firm arm around him. With his demon in tow, Jonathan turned and stalked the rest of the way home.

* * *

Weekends with Sock actually weren’t that bad. He would completely drop his efforts to make life suck for Jonathan (on purpose, anyway). His nagging turned to trying to get Jonathan out of the house to do something fun. And whether they went out or not, he could swear Sock was being a goofball on purpose, trying to make him laugh. Not that suddenly laughing at ‘nothing’ was seen as normal, but Jonathan didn’t really care what anyone thought about that.

Today was a perfect example of Sock’s weekend mode. He dragged Sock to a concert and just couldn’t help laughing at him trying to sing along. He hadn’t realized Sock was listening to his music closely enough to learn the words. He’d never even tried to share the music he loved with anyone before, but Sock had asked, and then listened, and now was doing an embarrassing little skirt-swishing dance to it. For some reason watching Sock be so happy made a smile keep creeping onto his face.

It was a good thing no one else could see Sock, or he’d have to pretend not to know the kid. Jonathan had staked out his spot in neutral ground between the groups that were actually dancing and the guys smoking and talking near the back. 

“Come dance!” Sock encouraged. “I know you like this song!”

That was not happening. Jonathan wasn’t moving from his spot.

“It’s more fun to dance with someone than just standing there. Isn’t that why you told me to come?”

Jonathan didn’t want to argue with Sock during the song, but when he was still being pestered as it wound down he finally muttered, “I’ve never gone to a concert with someone else before, and I don’t need to dance to enjoy it.”

“Really, never? Don’t you have any friends?” Sock teased.

“Not really.” There had been some guys Jonathan might talk to at school, but he didn’t hang out with them when they weren’t in a class with him, let alone outside of school. Then there was the fact that none of them actually wanted to be around him anymore. He had been too preoccupied with Sock hanging around him to consciously think about that until just this minute.

“What about me?”

“Do I really have to answer that?”

“You don’t think I’m your friend?” The band was done with their introduction and playing the opening of the next song, but Sock wasn’t responding to the music anymore.

Jonathan did not want to talk about this. He just wanted to listen right now.

“Jonathan!” Sock wailed. He darted back to stand right in front of Jonathan, completely ignoring the band. If he was going to try to talk in the middle of the show Jonathan wasn’t bringing him next time. Except as soon as he thought that he realized he couldn’t stop Sock from following him anyway.

“Friends don’t try to kill friends,” Jonathan muttered under his breath, hoping no one but Sock would hear him. He might not have anyone he would consider a ‘friend’ but it was still a pretty obvious rule.

Sock was silent for a long, oddly uncomfortable moment before he turned back towards the stage and resumed shifting around and almost-dancing to the music. Jonathan wasn’t surprised. Apart from a few key subjects Sock had the attention span of a hummingbird.

Except a few minutes later Sock answered, just loud enough that Jonathan couldn’t pretend he didn’t hear it over the music, “I’ll be your friend when you’re dead.”

* * *

Sock had spent the last hour pacing up and down the hallway having one of his weird one-sided conversations while Jonathan tried to get his homework over with. He was sitting on his bed, textbook open in his lap and earphones held tight to his head, not listening. It was freaky to hear Sock arguing with thin air. Was this how other people saw him when he was talking to Sock? Well, they could just go ahead and ignore him then, couldn’t they?

He got almost three songs worth of quiet before Sock drifted into his room to hover at his shoulder. When Jonathan glanced over at him he had his arms poised at his chest, hands hanging limp at the wrist. His expression was one Jonathan had never seen on his face before, the emphatic frown of a drooping hound dog

“So. . .” Sock started, and Jonathan actually bothered to switch off his music to listen. “About the whole suicide thing. What if I helped? You could hold my hands around the knife. That way you can kill yourself but still blame me.”

So they were back on Sock’s favorite subject, when he’d thought it might actually be something important. “If I could blame you it would be murder, not suicide.”

“Oh, maybe. . . We can find out! Like a bet. You win and you’ll probably go to heaven or somewhere. I win and we get to hang out forever, probably. So really it’s win-win!”

“Except I’d be dead.”

“A little death won’t hurt, right?”

“Pretty sure it would hurt, and anyway it’s not happening.” Jonathan expected that to be the end of it. Their obligatory hey-you-gonna-kill-yourself-yet conversation for the day.

“Why don’t you want to kill yourself, anyway?”

“Isn’t it the other way around? You need a reason to want to die, right? But normal people don’t need a reason to keep living.”

“But you should have lots of reasons! No one likes you, and you don’t care about anything, and even your parents are upset all the time, and on top of all that you have me to torment you,” Sock listed, counting off on his fingers.

“Yeah, I have you,” Jonathan agreed with that last point. It didn’t exactly feel like a bad thing. He could ignore the bad things in life readily enough so far just by disconnecting from them.

The hound dog expression was back, the frown practically dripping off of Sock’s face.

It was too weird. Jonathan had to break the silence. “What is wrong with you today?”

Sock rubbed one hand up and down his opposite arm, gaze darting away from Jonathan’s for a moment before flicking back again. “I guess. . . I wish I could just stab you.” Sock’s eyes were childishly wide and soft as he said it. No one should be able to look so pitifully sincere while saying something like that!

“So you’re sulking because you miss killing things.”

“Something like that.” Sock tried to lean into Jonathan’s shoulder, but he slipped and ended up partway in Jonathan’s shoulder instead.

He kept trying until Jonathan took pity on him. He let his neglected textbook slip out of his lap and put his arms around Sock, pulling him into the hug that Sock couldn’t initiate. He turned, hauling Sock onto the bed with him, and rolled over to lay halfway on top of him. As long as he was leaning into Sock, Sock could hug him back.

Even through his clothes he could feel the icy-hot tingle of Sock’s skin. It wasn’t painful, though something in the back of his mind still suggested that it should be. More than anything the sensation tingling along his skin made it impossible not to feel Sock.

Sock flung his arms around Jonathan’s shoulders and left them lying limp across his back. In contrast, he pressed his face tightly into Jonathan’s shoulder. There was only a minimum of wiggling before he settled down tucked against Jonathan, his eyes squeezed tightly closed.

“Have I told you lately how much you suck at your job?” What kind of demon needed reassurances about not being able to kill stuff? And from the very person they were supposed to be haunting?

Even as he said that Jonathan shifted one hand up to cradle the back of Sock’s head, knocking Sock’s ever-present hat askew with the motion. He stroked his fingers comfortingly over thick, messy hair that felt surprisingly like normal hair, except for the fact of being lighter and softer than seemed possible when he looked at the bushy mess of it. It had to be just another side effect. Clothes that lost their texture and weight and hair that felt insubstantially soft, all part of the demon package.

Sock was making pitiful little sleepy noises into his chest. Or maybe just responding to Jonathan daring to stroke his hair, as if they were close enough to care about each other. In the morning things would be back to normal, but at that moment it seemed like the right thing to give comfort.

“No sleep stabbing, okay?” Jonathan murmured.

“No promises,” Sock shot back.

Jonathan wasn’t worried. Sock couldn’t do anything to hurt him, after all.

* * *

Something felt wrong when Jonathan woke up. It couldn’t have been the fact of waking up alone. That had been the case every day of his life, barring a few times waking up to Sock floating over him making faces. It must have been the fact that his skin still felt hypersensitive, tingling everywhere Sock had rested against him.

Jonathan sat up with a groan, looking around, but his room was empty. He crawled out of bed and made his way to the bathroom. As he was opening the door he caught himself muttering, half to himself, “You had better not be in here.” He was sick of Sock always bugging him when he tried to use the bathroom.

The bathroom was empty.

The rest of the house, on later inspection, appeared to be empty. He kept expecting Sock to jump out at him. Then he expected Sock to be waiting at the bus stop, or in class. By the end of the day he was glaring around suspiciously and everyone and everything, determined not to relax and give Sock the reaction he wanted when he finally decided to pop back in.

But Sock was nowhere to be found, even when Jonathan went out of his way to look. Probably he had gone off on some demon business. He would have to be back soon, right? It was his job to haunt Jonathan, even if he was terrible at it.

Sock couldn’t just disappear as suddenly as he had come into Jonathan’s life, could he?

* * *

While he was hanging out with Sock he had never really dwelled on the fact that no one else wanted to talk to him. He hadn’t noticed how in the halls girls darted around him and boys shouldered past him like an obstacle and no one would look him in the eye. School was like moving through a dimly lit maze, alone in a crowd, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He hadn’t noticed that he’d gradually turned his music’s volume lower and lower until he could hear Sock’s chatter over it. Now he couldn’t seem to turn it up high enough to drown out the voices that nagged at him like background static. There was no point in listening to words that were never directed at him even when they were about him.

It took three days for the idea to creep into his mind that maybe Sock wasn’t coming back.

It took four to realize that his parents were treating him the same way as everyone at school. They kept watching him the same way his disapproving teachers did, waiting for him to act out. He caught them talking together in low voices that stopped the moment he entered the room, just like everyone else saying things about him but not to him.

In a week Jonathan had settled into the idea of being alone. It wasn’t that bad when he thought about it. People didn’t want to be around him, but he’d never had any real friends before Sock, either. If Sock was gone for good that just meant a return to normalcy, right?

* * *

Days blurred by until Jonathan lost count of exactly how long ago his personal demon had taken off and returned his life to normal.

He slept as much as he could, but it never seemed to relieve his exhaustion. He had no energy to put forth for anything. Most days he just stared at the ceiling, listening to music and wavering between empty daydreams and dreamless dozing.

His mother took him to two different doctors, but neither could find anything wrong with him. On one level it made sense to think of himself as sick, to make that the excuse for why he never wanted to get out of bed and do anything, but the only symptoms were tiredness and vague headaches that never developed into anything more. 

His father blew up at him one day out of nowhere, when all he had done was turn down yet another suggestion that he go out and do something or other. Jonathan didn’t have any answers for the tirade, even the phrases sharp enough to stick in his head. ‘I don’t understand why you want to be this way.’ ‘Are you trying to make us worry?’

There was no answer. He didn’t want anything. He wasn’t trying to do anything. This was just the way he was now and he couldn’t see how to change it. He didn’t even know if he would want to change himself if he could. He couldn’t see how things would be any better if he did.

At one point he remembered that Sock had mentioned the benefits of his job including weekends off. Maybe he had lumped those weekends together into an overdue vacation. Jonathan tried to calculate how long that could be, but he couldn’t remember how many weekends Sock had hung around with him or if it was two or three weeks since he had woken up to Sock’s abrupt absence, and had to give up trying to calculate when Sock might come back.

He wanted someone to talk to, but at the same time didn’t want to talk to anyone. (At least the second part wasn’t a problem, since even after he stopped talking to Sock no one really wanted anything to do with him.) He tried to put together conversations with Sock in his head, but it was all the same things over and over. He listened to the music he had shared with Sock, remembering his energetic, uncool dancing. Every mental circle came back to the same place.

It was impossible to stop feeling Sock’s absence. How many times had that lying little demon said he was never leaving? Sure, it was always bracketed with threats and suggestions that Jonathan might as well kill himself now because he’d never be rid of Sock, but the promise was still there.

The realization came slowly, that there was no point in even trying to move out of the isolated fog he found himself in. It was easier to believe there was nothing left in the world for him. There was only one way left to escape.

* * *

It’s an unremarkable Tuesday afternoon when he stops waiting for Sock to reappear. He leaves a note on the dining room table for his parents, telling them not to worry. He locks the front door before leaving everything dark and tidy, his keys and wallet left with the unfinished homework on his desk.

He isn’t thinking about anything in particular as he walks alone down a road he has never walked alone before. It’s an uphill climb until he reaches the level span of the bridge. He ducks through the barrier and drops down to the ledge where he spent a handful of peaceful hours.

The wind whispers over the bridge, as always, and leans into his shoulders and the back of his neck like impatient hands. It’s like someone at his back silently urging him to keep going. Like he has somewhere to be.

A cool breeze pressing on him is nothing like the hot-cold feeling of Sock’s hands, but of course he didn’t expect it to be. Sock can never touch him first. Sock isn’t here to try to touch him at all, not anymore.

And for some reason that absence is the only thing on his mind when he takes that last step. He has never dwelled on the bad things, tried not to let anyone get to him (especially since Sock, since knowing someone was out to stir up the worst his narrow little world could provide). If there is a way to not dwell on one good thing abruptly removed, Jonathan doesn’t know it.

The first thing Jonathan sees at the bottom of the canyon is Sock’s face. Everything is fogged in a red haze, but even twisted in a grimace so emphatic that one eye squints closed and his tongue pokes out between his teeth, it’s undeniably Sock.

“Wow, you’re all messed up. I guess the bridge was a bad idea.”

When Sock reaches out to him his hands aren’t hot or cold. All Jonathan can feel is a reality of pressure when Sock touches him. For the moment all he can feel is Sock, just as solid as he is now.


End file.
